Into the Night - Citizen Science Training day - introduction to citizen science

Introduction to Environmental

Citizen Science projects

Muki Haklay

Extreme Citizen Science (ExCiteS) research group, UCL

@mhaklay

Into The Night

• April 2014: US National Evolutionary Synthesis

Center (NESCent) on Anthropogenic Sensory

Stimuli as Drivers of Evolution: A conceptual

synthesis and roadmap for an integrated

citizen-science research network (organised

by Caren Cooper, Clinton D Francis, Jesse

Barber)

A bit of background…

• End 2014: Call for new Citizen Science project launched: New ideas for a UK-based citizen science project are being sought by Earthwatch.

• Proposal: Sound and Light / Son et lumière – a sustainable sensory landscape for humans and nature

• Team: Muki Haklay (UCL), Caren Cooper (North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences), Kate Jones (UCL), David McAlpine (UCL), Barbara Helm (University of Glasgow), Elizabeth Boakes (UCL)

• September 2015: First exploratory workshop

• September 2016: Second exploratory workshop

• December 2016: Funding from NERC

Project aims and objectives

• To investigate wellbeing benefits of dark skies and natural sounds as ecosystem services for plant and animal taxa, including humans.

• An extensive citizen science project to explore the evolutionary impacts of anthropogenic sound and light on plant and animal taxa, in particular birds and bats.

• To understand the interdependence of human health and wellbeing in relation to nearby animal and plant systems, and thus providing a demonstration of the ‘One Health’ framework

Growing awareness

If we have ‘nature deficit disorder’, should

we have ‘star deficit disorder’?

(cc) Tom Hall

Co-designed project

EarthWatch

Scientists

Participants

National Parks

NGOs (TCV)

Corporate partners

• Training day

• Workshops for co-designing citizen

science projects – 16th and 17th February

• Earth Hour citizen science pilots – 25th

March (opportunities for community

scientists!)

Activities in Into the Night

Outline

• Environmental Citizen Science – an

overview

• Classifying citizen science activities

• Setting a project – considerations

• Recruiting and retaining participants

• Evaluating

Citizen Science overview

Citizen Science

Long running Citizen Science

Ecology & biodiversity

Meteorology Marine

Citizen Cyberscience

Volunteer computing

Volunteer thinking

Passive Sensing

Community Science

Participatory sensing

DIY Science Civic Science

Haklay, M., 2013, Citizen Science and Volunteered Geographic Information – overview and typology of

participation in Crowdsourcing Geographic Knowledge

Citizen Science

Long running Citizen Science

Ecology & biodiversity

Meteorology Marine

Citizen Cyberscience

Volunteer computing

Volunteer thinking

Passive Sensing

Community Science

Participatory sensing

DIY Science Civic Science

Citizen Science overview

Haklay, M., 2013, Citizen Science and Volunteered Geographic Information – overview and typology of

participation in Crowdsourcing Geographic Knowledge

Biodiversity/Ecology

Participating in Big Garden

Birdwatch (source: RSPB)

Participating in a BioBlitz (source: OPAL)

© Audubon Cal.

Jennifer Jewett / USFWS

© WMO–No. 919

Meteorology

Coastal zones

Citizen Science

Long running Citizen Science

Ecology & biodiversity

Meteorology Marine

Citizen Cyberscience

Volunteer computing

Volunteer thinking

Passive Sensing

Community Science

Participatory sensing

DIY Science Civic Science

Haklay, M., 2013, Citizen Science and Volunteered Geographic Information – overview and typology of

participation in Crowdsourcing Geographic Knowledge

Volunteer computing

You can join World Community Grid at http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/

Volunteer Thinking

Passive Sensing

Haklay, M., 2013, Citizen Science and Volunteered Geographic Information – overview and typology of

participation in Crowdsourcing Geographic Knowledge

Citizen Science

Long running Citizen Science

Ecology & biodiversity

Meteorology Marine

Citizen Cyberscience

Volunteer computing

Volunteer thinking

Passive Sensing

Community Science

Participatory sensing

DIY Science Civic Science

Mapping for Change

EveryAware website at http://www.everyaware.eu

DIY Science

CLASSIFYING CITIZEN

SCIENCE ACTIVITIES

Typology of Citizen Science

• Contractual projects, communities ask professional researchers to conduct a specific scientific investigation

• Contributory projects, generally designed by scientists and for which members of the public primarily contribute data;

• Collaborative projects, generally designed by scientists and members of the public contribute data but might refine project design, analyze data, and/or disseminate findings;

• Co-Created projects, designed by scientists and members of the public working together and some of the public participants are actively involved in most or all aspects of the research process;

• Collegial contributions, non-credentialed individuals conduct research independently with varying degrees of expected recognition by institutionalized science and/or professionals.

Shirk et al. 2012. Public participation in scientific research: a framework for

deliberate design. Ecology and Society 17(2): 29.

Adjusted from Cooper, Dickinson, Phillips & Bonney, 2007, Citizen Science as tool for conservation in residential ecosystems.

Ecology and Society 12(2)

Question

Study Design

Data Collection

Data Analysis and

Interpretation

Understanding

results

Management Action

Geographic scope

of project

Nature of people

taking action

Research priority

Education priority

Traditional

Science

Scientific

Consulting*Contributory

Citizen

Science

Collaborative

Citizen

Science

Participatory

Action

Research

Variable Narrow NarrowBroad Broad

ManagersCommunity

Groups Managers IndividualsCommunity

Groups

Highest Medium High High Medium

Low Medium High High High

*often called Science Shops

Community Science

Co-created

Citizen

Science

Narrow

High

High

All

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√Public Scientists

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Participation in citizen science

• Collaborative science – problem definition, data collection and analysis

Level 4 ‘Extreme citizen science’

• Participation in problem definition and data collection

Level 3 ‘Participatory science’

• Citizens as basic interpreters Level 2 ‘Distributed

intelligence’

• Citizens as sensors Level 1

‘Crowdsourcing’

Haklay. 2013. Citizen Science and volunteered geographic information: Overview

and typology of participation, Crowdsourcing Geographic Knowledge

SETTING A PROJECT

Project goals

Increasing awareness

Collecting data

Improving STEM

education

Addressing local issue

Addressing social issue

Balancing act

ECSA 10 principles

1. Citizen science projects actively involve citizens in scientific endeavour that

generates new knowledge or understanding.

2. Citizen science projects have a genuine science outcome.

3. Both the professional scientists and the citizen scientists benefit from taking part.

4. Citizen scientists may, if they wish, participate in multiple stages of the scientific

process.

5. Citizen scientists receive feedback from the project.

6. Citizen science is considered a research approach like any other, with limitations

and biases that should be considered and controlled for.

7. Citizen science project data and meta-data are made publicly available and where

possible, results are published in an open access format.

8. Citizen scientists are acknowledged in project results and publications.

9. Citizen science programmes are evaluated for their scientific output, data quality,

participant experience and wider societal or policy impact.

10. The leaders of citizen science projects take into consideration legal and ethical

issues surrounding copyright, intellectual property, data sharing agreements,

confidentiality, attribution, and the environmental impact of any activities.

Citizen Science design framework

Shirk, J. L., H. L. Ballard, C. C. Wilderman, T. Phillips, A. Wiggins, R. Jordan, E. McCallie, M., Minarchek, B. V.

Lewenstein, M. E. Krasny, and R. Bonney. 2012. Public participation in scientific research: a framework for deliberate

design. Ecology and Society 17(2): 29. http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-04705-170229

RUNNING AND EVALUATING

Recruitment & retainment

• What will be the reason to join?

• How to reach potential participants?

• What is the process of joining (‘on

boarding’)?

• Consider the goals, and how they are

evaluated

Different constituencies

• Public - participants in events, volunteers, marginalised groups

• Intermediaries - museums, science shops, universities, NGOs, Environment Protection Agencies

• Scientists - ecologists, physics, life science, medicine, social science, humanities

• Policy - civil servants, decision makers, political groups, civic society

Retaining participants

• Plan for on going communication to

encourage participants to continue their

involvement

• Provide meaningful feedback to

participants as they go along

• Pay attention to participants needs

Evaluation

• Funders, managers, and you, as project

manager, need to consider how the

project will be evaluated

• Evaluation can take significant resources

from the project if not planned properly

• Evaluation should be planned from the

start

• A popular framework for evaluation:

theory of change / logic model

Theory of Change, Logic Models

• Methodologies that emerged in the mid 1990s, used by Non-Governmental Organisations, Governmental organisations –specifically in the context of planning and evaluating social change

• Theory in the sense of ‘this is how we think things ought to work’. We want the theory to be plausible, feasible & testable

• Logic in the sense of ‘the relationship between elements and between an element and the whole’

Framework for PPSR

Shirk, J. L., H. L. Ballard, C. C. Wilderman, T. Phillips, A. Wiggins, R. Jordan, E. McCallie, M., Minarchek, B. V.

Lewenstein, M. E. Krasny, and R. Bonney. 2012. Public participation in scientific research: a framework for deliberate

design. Ecology and Society 17(2): 29. http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-04705-170229

Developing Logic Model

• Working backward, from long term objectives to the resources. Relies on the following elements:

• Inputs – resources that we have: participants, volunteers, social media followers, funding, existing guides

• Activities – things that we do: events, exhibition, online activities

• Outputs - products from the project: policy briefing, guidelines, websites, trained participants

• Outcomes (short, medium) - changes that the project led at individual, group, and policy levels

• Impacts (long) - systematic change that the project led to.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant

agreement No 709443

Your turn!

• On your tables, there are descriptions of

two briefs about wellbeing and nature

impacts of light pollution

• In groups of 3, consider how we are going

to engage people in a citizen science

project about one of these topics –

identify the type of the project

(according to one of the classifications)

and the goals of the project